First Official Thursday Sees a Change of Order: ABC Up From Last Season, 'Delaware Valley' Premiere Solid; CBS Tops Again, 'Schmidt Enterprises' Clicks; FOX Snags No. 3, 'Sister Tales' Big; NBC Loses, Strong 10pm
Written By: Sally Smith We'll be making several changes here at Click, Nielsen as the regular season begins. First of all, we're shifting our entire focus to the ad-centric adults 18-49 demographic and its subsets. The total viewership numbers are irrelevant, so there's no point in jotting them down every week. Secondly, we'll be giving an analysis of the night every week, rather than the standard "increased X%" information. September 24, 2015 CBS won the night in the ad-centric adults 18-49 demographic. ABC had a disappointing premiere night on multiple levels. The hyped comedy hour underwhelmed, with veteran Modern Family (11.7, +144%) not only landing behind two other shows but also scoring only a few points above its stellar late Wednesday level, and newbie Delaware Valley (10.5) failing to breakout despite lots of buzz and heavy promotion. Things didn't go much better in the drama department either, as former legend Wisteria Lane (14.5, +25%) rated well below its dominative spring levels while also sharply losing its hour, and Nashville (13.3, +64%) ceased to deliver the kind of magical retention ABC had so clearly hoped for when executing this schedule. CBS managed its first opening Thursday win in three years, as its risky schedule was proven a success. One of the big questions at CBS's keynote last year was "why did they put the much stronger Central Perk behind 2 Broke Girls?". Well, the second-tier comedy hour made it obvious that 2 Broke Girls (13.9, +85%) is the clear anchor of its hour, as Central Perk (13.6, +1033%) produced great retention but showed that it's not independent enough to run its own hour. As was expected, the 9:00 hour did the best, with Two and a Half Men ''(16.0, +5%) improbably rising from its already astonishing premiere last week, and its critically-raved spin-off ''Schmidt Enterprises (15.1) posting the strongest series premiere since the post-Super Bowl debut of Undercover Boss in 2010. Later in the night, The Big Bang Theory (14.7, +90%) overachieved and held off Nashville for the 10:00 victory, but couldn't help its spin-off Penny's Palace (7.0, -5%), which dipped a bit from its disastrous premiere. FOX eked out a third-place finish, with a so-so night. Their new 8:00 comedy hour went much better than ABC's, as valuably young-skewing New Girl (12.3, +392%) took a strong second to 2 Broke Girls and provided a suitable launching pad for compatible freshman Sister Tales (13.4), which lost its half-hour by a couple tenths among adults 18-49, but skewed very young like its lead-in. The post-comedy portion of the night went rather modestly, as The X Factor (13.0, +21%) landed at the bottom of its hour, failing to capitalize on having a stronger lead-in than it's ever had before, and The Following (11.8, +0%) retained all of its solid, but marginal premiere number. NBC, coming off the back of an impressive second-place season, predictably lost the night, but only by a tick. Being that Revolution (10.2, +48%) was purposely scheduled as the only drama in its hour, the fact that it pulled the second-lowest rating of the night is very disappointing. Something positive that came out of NBC's mixed night was the timeslot premiere of former borderline hit Chicago Fire (13.9, +88%), which shockingly ended up squarely ahead of The X Factor and was actually in striking distance of Wisteria Lane. But the best news for NBC undoubtedly came at the end of the night, where 1600 Penn (13.6, +2%) unimaginably topped the peak of its year-ago heights, despite spending most of last season on Friday and a much more difficult timeslot situation versus its fomer Thursday slot, paving the way for a very powerful series premiere of low-budget Checker Street (13.0). Overnight ratings for Thursday, September 24, 2015: 18 ad-sustained programs *The percentages in the analysis are compared to the last original episode of the series, or, if series premiere week, the year-ago episode of the series.